I grew up outside of Livingston, Montana, three miles up a curvy dirt road. A small creek, teeming with native Yellowstone cutthroats and flanked by bushy willows, paralleled the road, and I started fishing there as a preschooler with my father, planting the seeds of a lifetime obsession. By the time I was 5, I would venture to the stream alone with a rod and jar full of grasshoppers freshly procured from our front yard. On my way out the door, I would tell my parents, “I’m going to get lunch.”

She didn’t break my heart. She may have blindsided me a little, but it’s not as if she took my legs out and left me writhing in agony. We didn’t have enough history for that; there had been nothing promised. She simply vanished from my life—a life in which her appearance was at best a memorable cameo.

Not that I was blessed with the kind of telescopic perspective that enabled me to see that at the age of 17, when every word, glance, and gesture from a girl you’re interested in is freighted with earth-shattering significance.